The Oatmeal Incident

Due to the fact that I’ve become more and more gravitationally-challenged, Richard has begun spouting the phrase “SITUATIONAL AWARENESS! SITUATIONAL AWARENESS!” in an attempt to help me become more conscious of my surroundings.

I’ve heard Richard say it so many times it has become my unintentional mantra.

Last week I carefully walked downstairs, fed the dogs breakfast, took a few moments to make instant oatmeal, and pour myself a Cup of Jo. Coffee in my left hand; oatmeal in my right, I slowly made my way back to the bedroom and placed both mugs on my dresser.

The Situational Awareness-O-Meter of my right hand must have been off just a tad, maybe because I’m a leftie. Instead of placing the mug of Maple & Brown Sugar oatmeal on my dresser, I placed it between my dressers. There was just enough room for it to tip over and slowly feed its contents onto the clothes in every single one of my Elfa wire mesh dresser drawers.

Why do I always try to use things in ways in which they were not intended? Why do I say things like, “Oh! Look at that toilet on the side of the road! Wouldn’t it look great with purple flowers spilling out of it in the the middle of our garden?” I‘ve only done that twice. It didn’t look as good as I’d hoped it would, so I did it again and it still looked like crap. So, why did I think Elfa wire mesh dressers would be so much groovier than normal dressers?

As my father would say, “Because you’re dumb.”

The first thing I did was stand still and watch the glacier of oatmeal meander into every single one of my stupid drawers as it carved its way through the crevasse of my two stupid dressers. It was as if a dog was claiming his territory by peeing on all of my clothes in super slo-mo.

The second thing I did was watch it globbulate into a thick puddle on the floor. One little packet of instant oatmeal sure doesn’t look like much in a mug, even after adding hot water, but that’s only when it’s horizontal.

Since the oatmeal moved at the speed of, well, oatmeal, it had only been able to deposit sediment on some of the clothes in each drawer. I quickly grabbed armfuls that had managed to escape the wrath of molten breakfast cereal and threw them onto my bed.

I ran downstairs, grabbed the entire box of kitchen garbage bags, ran back up and stuffed two of them with oated clothes until there were no clothes left behind.

I’d been meaning to clean out my drawers, anyway.

I ran back downstairs and emptied both bags into the washing machine. There was no time to separate my whites from my oatmeals.

Summoning enormous amounts of “Situational Awareness x 2” I took one drawer at a time, walked to the loo – – because skipping was simply out of the question – – and placed it in the shower. The drawers came clean, but boy, were they steamed. (Sorry. I couldn’t stop myself.)

But, I had no time to celebrate, my friends. There was still oatmeal on the frame of my dresser, and the floor. It was beginning to congeal, and not in a good way.

I used a wet towel to clean the dresser. I tried to do the same to clean the floor, but that only resulted in a thinner layer of oatmeal.

There was only one way to get the job done: I Swiffer Wet-Jetted the crap out of the floor.

When all was Swiffered and done, I ran back downstairs to see if the washing machine had been able to eat all of my oatmeal. Not so much.

In an attempt to Bounce the oatmeal fragments out of my clothes, I threw them into the dryer with a dryer sheet. Sure enough, when I opened the dryer, the lint trap was full of oats.

I thought about swapping the Elfa dresser with the normal-person dresser in my office, but moving the dressers by myself could easily create an unsafe Leslie environment.

I still like to bring my coffee and oatmeal upstairs, I’m just more “Situationally Aware!” It’s bound to spill again, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. Just like the oatmeal, I like to live on the edge.